Behind defiance against tyranny is the grief: Today thousands chanting pro-freedom slogans attended the funeral of activist Bilal Ahmad Bhat in Kashmir. Israel tries to prevent such protests by refusing to return the bodies of those it has executed. This young Bahraini man cries during the funeral of 18-year-old Ali Abdulghani attended by thousands chanting slogans & holding up posters with the picture of young Ali.

Reports don’t identify what the repressive Bahraini regime accused Abdulghani of doing but he was on the run after being sentenced to five years in prison–almost certainly for protesting since his mother was released from prison just a few weeks ago. When police & masked men cornered him at his aunt’s house, he fled.

When the history/obituary of the neoliberal era is finally written, media will require special condemnations just as it merits a special place in hell.

Documentation for that claim (if any were needed): Yahoo identifies these men as Afghan & Pakistani “refugees” (& yes, inexplicably it used that term instead of “migrants”) protesting at the Moria detention center against their imminent deportation to Turkey. Although both Afghans & Pakistanis are being denied asylum as “economic migrants,” both are war refugees. Or does the EU deny years of US drone bombing in Pakistan & nearly 15 years of US-European occupation & bombing in Afghanistan?

This Pakistani refugee is threatening to hang himself from a utility pole during a demonstration inside the Moria “registration center” on the Greek island of Lesbos. That’s what the Reuters caption says. Are we to think this man is simply overwrought & melodramatic?

Moria is not a registration center. It is a concentration camp where Afghans, Pakistanis, & other refugees deemed “economic migrants” are incarcerated in overcrowded, dehumanizing conditions without sanitation, healthcare, sleeping quarters. The conditions are so squalid that Doctors Without Borders pulled out, not wanting to be implicated in the barbarism, & perhaps not wanting their personnel to be beaten or bombarded with tear gas by riot cops along with the refugees. UNHCR, the UN refugee agency hasn’t been there much anyway but they pulled out so they could pretend it wasn’t happening to cover for the EU.

These are homeless children in Manila, Philippines, where it is matter-of-factly stated that a quarter of the country’s 98 million people live below the poverty line of one US dollar a day. In fact, last year the World Bank, in an act of inexplicable largesse, raised the poverty line to $1.90 a day using 2011 prices.

We could ask the World Bank to explain their actuarial calculations: like, why a measly $1.90 & why 2011 prices? But what’s the point when their poverty line hasn’t a shred of relationship to reality? What’s the point when their policies have created most of this poverty & they remain indifferent to it? They’re too preoccupied stuffing money into those Panama trusts.

This is Miguel, my favorite little ten-year-old boy. A few years ago he used to regale me with fart jokes & the sound of fake farts which he learned on vacation in Mexico. He’s aged out of that now that he turned ten today. But his five-year-old cousin Joanna has taken up the mantle & spent over an hour entertaining me with her vocal imitations. So indecorous. So absolutely delightful.

Happy birthday to my little friend. heart emoticon

We’re getting a front seat into how the two parties really work. CBS reported that Sanders took Wisconsin tonight. But the analyst went on to say that despite his overwhelming popular lead, Clinton has the delegates sewed up & Sanders can’t catch up. Those delegates determine the nominee. That sure isn’t how we were taught US democracy in high school social studies class. Can someone explain why they bother to calculate popular votes if they don’t mean squat? And why the hell we are putting up with that kind of faux-democracy?

Behold the weasel Donovan! After the Scottish singer cancelled his Tel Aviv concert in January, BDS supporters jumped to the wrong conclusion & went to his wall with profuse gratitude assuming he’d done it to respect BDS. We didn’t know he was running us around the block.

The postponement was a cover. They changed venue & the new troubadour for apartheid performed last Saturday to raise funds to support transcendental meditation in Israel. Only 400 people showed up at the second-rate venue. So at least Israelis have a measure of what kind of musician is willing to disrespect BDS & entertain them.

Maybe you have to be of a certain age not to be awestruck by the Bernie Sanders phenomenon. But if you came of age in the 1960s, you’ve been through pretty much the same thing before with Eugene McCarthy, George McGovern, Jesse Jackson,  Ralph Nader–& in many ways, Barack Obama. They’re what used to be called “people’s movements.”

You never want to get jaded in politics or insensitive to new developments but you also don’t want to get taken for a ride on a bandwagon.

There’s lots of blogging about the deeper meaning of the Sanders campaign. Despite the casual dismissal of Sanders’ support for drone aircraft, for Israel & a Jewish-only state, & his opposition to rights for undocumented immigrants, perhaps when the campaign shakes out, one way or the other, Sanders’ supporters will become part of rebuilding the antiwar movement, become central to building BDS, & organize for immigrant/refugee rights. That would be the sure sign of a deeper political meaning. Color me skeptical. But prove me wrong.

Recently, in a disagreement with a progressive guy, he told me my arguments relied on “inapplicable generalizations aimed at eliciting emotional reactions.”

Is there a more classic, time-worn cliche to put down a woman you can’t cogently answer? Is there a woman anywhere who wouldn’t be a millionaire if she had a dime for every time that was said to her? Do we have to explain the misogynist assumptions behind the claim that women think/argue with their hearts & men with their heads?

The Reuters caption to this photo generated quite an uproar in Zionist media after CAMERA, a pro-Israel media hound dog, objected to its veracity.

The caption on March 31st read: “HEBRON, Palestinian Territories;
The mother of Palestinian Ihab Maswadeh inspects belongings after their family house was partially demolished by the Israeli forces in the West Bank city of Hebron March 31, 2016. According to the Israeli military, Ihab Maswadeh was shot dead by Israeli troops after he attempted to stab an Israeli soldier last December.”